Why is it that Western science evolved as a thoroughly male-dominated enterprise? As philosopher Sandra Harding has noted, "women have been more systematically excluded from doing serious science than performing any other social activity except, perhaps, frontline warfare." In A WorldWithout Women, David F. Noble provides the first full-scale investigation of the origins and implications of the masculine culture of Western science and technology, and in the process offers some surprising revelations. Noble begins by showing that, contrary to the widely held notion that the culture of learning in the West has always excluded women--an assumption that rests largely upon the supposed legacy of ancient Greece--men did not thoroughly dominate intellectual life until the beginning of the secondmillennium of the Christian era. At this time science and the practices of higher learning became the exclusive province of the newly celibate Christian clergy, whose ascetic culture denied women a place in any scholarly enterprise. By the twelfth century, papal reform movements had all but sweptaway the material and ideological supports of future female participation in the world of learning; as never before, women were on the outside looking in. Noble further demonstrates that the clerical legacy of a world without women remained more or less intact through the Reformation, and permeatedthe emergant culture of science. A World Without Women finally points to a dread of women at the core of modern scientific and technological enterprise, as these disciplines work to deprive one-half of humanity of its role in production (as seen in the Industrial Revolution's male appropriation of labor) and reproduction as well(the age-old quest for an artificial womb). It also makes plain the hypocrisy of a community that can honor a female scientist with a bronze bust, as England's Royal Society did for Mary Somerville in the mid-nineteenth century, yet deny her entry to the very meeting hall in which it enjoyed prideof place. An important and often disturbing book, A World Without Women is essential reading for anyone concerned not only about the world of science, but about the world that science has made.

David Franklin Noble (July 22, 1945 – December 27, 2010) was a critical historian of technology, science and education, best known for his groundbreaking work on the social history of automation. In his final years he taught in the Division of Social Science, and the department of Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto. Noble held positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Smithsonian Institution and Drexel University, as well as many visiting professorships.

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"This is not a book to be read in haste. It should be considered carefully and discussed thoroughly - and women should remember its content!"--Professor Anne M. Butler, Utah State University

"An exciting history."--Publishers Weekly

"This is an important book because it reaches into the deep reasons that led to the male dominance of Western science and shows that the outcome, like so much in history, was contingent. It did not have to turn out the way it did--and by clear implication, it does not have to be the same inthe future."--Daniel J. Kevles

"Very useful in bringing out certain themes important to the course i teach. Well written and clear."--Pat Smith Wasyliw, Ithica College

"Fascinating, informative, utterly persuasive."--Benita Eisler

"Noble takes a bold, important step toward explaining the current minor role of women in science by placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the monastically oriented male-dominated Christian church....Likely to be controversial...highly recommended."--Library Journal

"An original, ambitious project that brings together scholarship from the history of science, religion, and women's studies to present the vicissitudes of almost 2,000 years of calumny that defined women as unfit to devote their lives to study, especially the study of nature."--BettyannKevles, Newsday

"A fascinating and provocative book."--Natalie Z. Davis

"Learned, Challenging, and provocative. A wonderful book."--Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt